New Workshop

I was ashamed to find out the other day that it has been nearly two years since I last posted anything on here so thought I had better start doing some updates and give our lone contributor of late (Mick) some support. Unlike some I have no plans to de-camp to the now commercially owned Warners Group RMweb. The standard of moderation there continues to be less than impartial and piss-poor in my opinion. There are plenty of good people on there and some excellent modelling of course, but I'm happy enough to stay 'local' and blog here.

Not much actual modelling has taken place over the past 18 months whilst the house has been subject to major alteration and improvement. About 5 years ago I blogged about my then new little workshop in a large broom cupboard under the stairs. Well that has now been handed back to the domestic authority and is now full of freezer, beer/wine cooler, vacuum cleaner and other assorted household paraphernalia.

I am now resident in what was the smallest bedroom before we converted the loft and the family all moved up a room size. I've fitted the room out myself, the cabinets were custom made for me to oddball sizes by a good customer from work.



View looking down the room towards the workbench with my portable workstation under the window for natural daylight. The position to the left will have my small spraybooth permantly set up in due course. The shelf under the workbench has my DCC 'power tower' on it and feeds up to the switchable DC/DCC test track on the workstation

Those 2mil wallclocks don't half tick loudly!

I will try and do a seperate posting on the workstation soon.



Machine shelf with cupboards under and over. I've been building up a selection of Proxxon kit for a few years now and its nice to be able to keep them all out at once. At the far end is my new Warco 'big' mini lathe which with MT3 headstock and MT2 tailstock gives me much more capacity and flexibility than my old Toyo derived micro lathe.

The shelf puts the machines at a comfortable height for operation whilst standing.

View into the left corner. The TV/DVD combo was bought cheaply on offer from Asda and is used to play my collection of railway DVD's as I model! I've also started to load kit instructions onto my iPhone as PDF's and can punch them through onto the screen via a little AppleTV gadget.

The shelf seen under the workbench is to stand my airbrush compressor on.

The pictures are prints of some of Mike Raithby's excellent work, often used on the cover of December 2mm Mags.

View into the opposite corner with stock boxes up on the shelves. The work bench along the wall here is a folding one and can be dropped out of the way when I need to free up space to work on a layout module. The brackets are very heavy duty and the whole thing is rock solid when up. I can work on one 1200mm layout module at a time with access to all four sides. 'Niddbeck Bridge' at 1500mm also fits but access is only from three sides.

I suppose I am now running out of excuses for not getting any modelling done! I have dusted off the boards for my 'Haromthwaite' micro layout and am looking at restarting that soon. The other major decision I need to make is wether I should restart work on the 7200mm of  'Pool in Wharfedale' or do another small 1500mm layout to utilise the expensive flight case I had made for 'Niddbeck Bridge'. Both schemes have their attractions and otherwise.

Edward S





L&YWG Loco Chassis Workshop Saturday 28th April 2012

The loco workshop organised by Edward Sissling went ahead as planned at his work premises in Bradford on Saturday 28th April 2012.

No less than thirteen members gathered for the event which commenced at 10.00am. Seven of those present brought along a locomotive chassis project on which to work. Mostly these comprised Fence Houses Model Foundry generic 0-6-0 etched chassis and a Nigel Hunt etched design chassis.

Only one of the chassis had been started beforehand and it is fair to say that in the time available everyone completed the early stages of construction i.e. removing and cleaning the etch from the sheet, fixing in place the phosphor bronze bearings with phosphor bronze spring pick ups, (Simpson Springs) sweating together the side rods, assembling the side frames into the loco frame assembly jig and cutting/fixing the PCB frame spacers together. It could be said we had a good ratio of students to instructors but I don't think anyone who was there would have described it quite like that since it was just a bunch of like minded people who had arranged to be in the same place on the same day with their modelling kit.

It is true we had five people who had amongst them a good deal of locomotive building experience and just over an equal number of people who didn't, but the atmosphere was so relaxed and informal that although it might have been thought it could be described as a tutorial the truth was we all spent a most enjoyable and productive day. A special mention goes to Steve Dunkeyson who kindly gave of his time to bring along Shop 3. (I think he made a 'bob or two'.....!

A couple of pictures below give a flavour of what went on. For 2mm Scale Association members who have access to the virtual area group (VAG) a folder will be uploaded with more photographs taken during the event by Edward Sissling and Mick Simpson.

Without exception those who came along said they would come along again and continue the work.

Thanks to Edward for organising the day and locally arranging the refreshments. For the future those who expressed an interest but could not get to yesterdays event will probably have an opportunity to do something similar on another occasion.

Oh, almost forgot to tell you, this being Bradford most of us participated in the consumption of a curry at the conclusion. (yummy)

Mick S.

N10 0-6-2T Progress

Since I last posted about the LNER/BR N10 there has been a little progress as can be seen from the attached pictures. 

The cab spectacles were a bit tedious but patience and a steady hand brought a result. On the 4mm model these spectacle plates were in two parts, which is an unnecessary complication in 2mm scale so I chose to fix just one in each aperture, from the outside. Trouble is they needed to fit into the half etched recesses provided. They all needed to be slimmed down in order to fit the recess. Well trying to file them would not be without its problems but I used an old paintbrush to push the little etched circles over and this gave a firm foundation on which to carefully file a small amount from around the entire circumference. Very therapeutic.......!

The coal rails went on really well (I thought) and since the last you saw this engine the chimney, dome and smoke box door have been added along with tank front and cab handrails, cab roof, buffers and lamp irons. Castings come courtesy of Bob Jones at Fence Houses Model Foundry they are in fact J72 castings. Not a million miles away from what is required for the N10 and wholly acceptable in my view.

I'm happy enough with the result but you judge for yourselves from the pictures.

For the future I have a bit of a problem with the radial truck. I leave you to guess what's gone wrong and maybe next time I will be able to report how I put it right. No pictures of that just yet because the problem is not solved.

Mick S.

NEAG Meeting update

Yesterday's meeting went off quite well with a good deal of interest shown in the Electra coupling. I was able to do three small demonstrations showing how the Chris Mills designed jig made construction of the couplings very easy and fairly quick.

The reason for there being three mini demonstrations was a large number of people gathered around a single table might not have been quite so informative. Well, this is 2mm scale and things are by their very nature, small.

One comment on the last posting was a suggestion that this might make a reasonable subject for a 2mm Magazine article. Well that has certainly been the plan for a while but before we launched into that we want to be sure what gets published reflects what is the final version of the jig. In addition Chris and I are looking at the possibility of doing a short video.

The first of our pictures show one small session in progress toward the end of the afternoon. The second picture shows members forming an orderly queue for the other regular event of our meetings..................!

Mick S.

In the Distant NEAG Meeting 14th April 2012

North East Area Group meeting information.   

Saturday 14th April 2012          
Saint Barnabas Church Hall, Bournmoor.
Time - Please Note 2.00pm – 5.00pm. (approx.)

First of all my apologies for not getting this out sooner. For some reason I imagined I had a fortnight from York show to send out the notice of the meeting when in fact I had less than seven days - shocking! (Or the onset of old age........)

At the upcoming meeting on Saturday I want to return to the subject of couplings and in particular the Electra coupling. You will all know about these couplings and the fact that Chris Mills and I both not only use them but had designed modifications of John Whitehead's original concept.Of course we are in regular contact with John and when he saw we had made some modifications to his original design it obviously got him thinking and he came up with a further improvement on the newer design.

Following this Chris, industrious as ever, designed and neat jig for use in their manufacture. I personally think this is an ingenious design and approached Alan Smith to see if it were feasible to mass produce these items. Well the answer is yes and I will have just such a jig with me on Saturday to show you all how easy it is to make these things accurately.

Our next meeting after Saturday is of course the 30th Anniversary of the formation of the North East Area Group being held on the 23rd June. 

Watch the space

Mick S.

NEAG Meeting Update

As will be seen form the pictures below several NEAG members braved the threat of inclement winter weather to hear and see Ian Lister demonstrate his technique for producing authentic stonework. It is fair to say this will form the basis for an article in the 2mm Magazine at some stage in the future.

Ian described his methods and then presented 6 of us with pre prepared boards with some polyfilla mix on and we had a go. Everyone was impressed with not only ythe results, but the speed within which they were achieved. 

Above - the  assembled throng.

And below - a little bit of audience participation.

(some had already completed before the picture was taken)

A Really enjoyable meeting.

Mick S.

In the Distant NEAG Meeting 4th February 2012

North East Area Group meeting information.



Saturday 4th February 2012
Saint Barnabas Church Hall, Bournmoor.
Time - Please Note 2.00pm – 5.00pm. (approx.)

Those of you who attended the final meeting of 2011 just before Christmas will already know we had a few gems presented to us in one form or another. As you can see below, we had a grand culinary feast too.....!

A couple of the pictures that appeared on the featured buildings on Ian Lister’s Berwick, Tweed Dock and Spittal Quay layout. Since then Ian has kindly agreed to do us a short instructional session using the materials he had on display at the meeting. For anyone who is interested in producing decent stonework I would say this is not a meeting to be missed....!

See you all on the 4th February for your usual fix of 2mil.

Mick S.